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MojiLaLa Secures $1.5 Million Seed Funding

SAN JOSE — MojiLaLa has secured a $1.5 million seed round to continue building the first and largest emoji and sticker database. The funding round is backed by Great Oaks VC, betaworks ventures and IVP Partner Dennis Phelps. With the investment, MojiLaLa plans to scale its platform and expand its engineering team, following a successful beta period that began in late 2016.

MojiLaLa is the world’s first and largest emoji marketplace, currently ranked in the top 20 in Apple iMessage in over 33 countries. By empowering creatives to sell their emoji designs to the public, the MojiLaLa platform gives consumers new tools for visual expression across a range of digital messaging apps.

“At a time when 6 billion emojis are sent every day, our core mission is making the messaging platform a place where people can communicate with more creativity and a higher level of artistic expression,” said MojiLaLa CEO and Co-Founder Dana Loberg, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. “We built this marketplace to help artists distribute and monetize the incredible images they create, all while giving users the power to augment the chats, texts and photos they send to their friends.”

Launched during the time of the iOS 10 sticker marketplace, MojiLaLa aligns perfectly with Apple’s new focus on creative engagement within the iMessage app. Additionally, MojiLaLa distributes stickers through integrations with a variety of mobile messaging apps and chat platforms, including Kika Keyboard, Baidu, Giphy, Line, Facebook Messenger, Microsoft, Skype, Gfycat, and Telegram.

“MojiLaLa is becoming an important part of the messaging ecosystem and is building deep relationships with artists who design natively for the medium,” said betaworks ventures Partner Matthew Hartman. “We’re already starting to see consumers incorporate mixed-reality into everyday life and the team has an impressive vision for enabling artists to be part of this shift.”